today he's offering for canada to train and equip the vastly increased (and with greater responsibilities and mandate) African Union force to be deployed to Darfur.

by next week he'll be talking about to hell with waiting for the UNSC, we're going in now... I like this guy and I'm glad to have Canada as a neighbor. Hey we may have disagreed on Iraq but I can respect the way you're looking at the problems of the world and trying to handle, deal and plan for them. It's a lot better than doing nothing or trying to undermine efforts to do something.

Ottawa  Canada will help train African troops to try to stop the Darfur crisis, a tragedy that might dwarf in scale the Rwandan genocide a decade ago if the international community fails to act swiftly, Prime Minister Paul Martin says.

African leaders feel strongly that peacekeeping troops from their own continent should be used if there is any international intervention in the Darfur region of Western Sudan, Mr. Martin said yesterday.

Canada, however, has told the African Union it stands ready to help train those troops and provide military equipment such as flak jackets, Mr. Martin said during an interview on the CBC Radio program Cross Country Checkup.

Mr. Martin did not say where this training might occur, nor how many veteran Canadian peacekeepers might be available to do it. Discussions with the African Union along these lines are in an exploratory phase, said Melanie Gruer, Mr. Martin's press secretary.

Mr. Martin made the offer last week when he met AU leaders at the United Nations, but nothing has been fleshed out at this point, Ms. Gruer said.

Mr. Martin lamented the fact that the United Nations has not yet authorized intervention to halt the slaughter in Darfur because the world body is bogged down by a combination of great power politics, on the one hand, and really a lot of very counterproductive legalisms on the other.

UN agencies estimate that more than 50,000 people have already perished in the 20-month-old conflict in Darfur and that more than a million others have fled their villages to save their lives.

There are crimes against humanity being committed, and the United Nations is debating intervention as to whether or not this is a genocide or whether or not it threatens international security, Mr. Martin said.

Put simply, he continued, humanitarian atrocities are occurring here and that should be sufficient reason to go in.

Mr. Martin was elaborating on his proposals last week to the UN to rewrite criteria for international intervention.

In 1994, the UN failed to authorize the use of military force to halt the slaughter of more than 500,000 members of the Tutsi ethnic minority in Rwanda, a conflict that was later recognized internationally as a genocide.

The U.S. government recently said what's happening in Darfur is also a genocide. Canada has not yet made that legal determination.

Moreover, the Darfur crisis might well become another Rwanda if we don't act very, very quickly.

Canada called for outside intervention as early as last June, and reiterated the urgency of the situation during meetings with AU leaders last week, Mr. Martin said. We've got to get those troops and they've got to get in there. . . .

People are dying, and they are dying right now. The time for niceties is over.

Sudan is not the only powder keg in Africa. Thus, a large African peacekeeping force of 75,000 troops from various countries should be trained and kept on standby, Mr. Martin said.

This was something that should have occurred after the Rwandan bloodbath, he said.

A Canadian general, Roméo Dallaire, commanded the tiny UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda. Many of his troops were from African nations. He's said they served bravely, but they did not have modern equipment and were hamstrung by UN rules restricting the use of force.

Despite his frustrations with UN decision making, Mr. Martin said the world body's approval is essential for military interventions. We don't want unilateral action by one country alone.

today he's offering for canada to train and equip the vastly increased (and with greater responsibilities and mandate) African Union force to be deployed to Darfur.

by next week he'll be talking about to hell with waiting for the UNSC, we're going in now... I like this guy and I'm glad to have Canada as a neighbor. Hey we may have disagreed on Iraq but I can respect the way you're looking at the problems of the world and trying to handle, deal and plan for them. It's a lot better than doing nothing or trying to undermine efforts to do something.

Click to expand...

He's always been fairly direct with the media, which I've always liked myself. On the other hand, talking tough in itself means nothing if he can't walk the walk too - we'll see.

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